UFC 170: San Jose's Daniel Cormier enters Saturday bout in angry mood

Any warm and fuzzy feelings Daniel Cormier may have had toward his former wrestling training partner Patrick Cummins are long gone now.

Cormier, a San Jose-based mixed martial arts fighter, will face Cummins in the pay-per-view co-main event of UFC 170 in Las Vegas on Saturday, and he is looking to make Cummins pay for some recent words.

"Before I was just looking at Pat as I guy I knew from back in the day and we were going to get a chance to compete," Cormier said. "Now I'm actually going in there to kick his butt. I'm going in there to beat him up. It's all because of his words. He made his bed, now he's got to lay in it."

Cummins was working at a Southern California coffee shop last week when he was picked to fight as a replacement for Rashad Evans, who injured his knee Feb. 12 and had to pull out. The bout was originally cancelled before being re-scheduled a day later with Cummins slated for his UFC debut.

A big reason UFC president Dana White gave the fight to Cummins was his story about making Cormier cry during a wrestling training session for the 2004 Olympics. Cormier was preparing for the Games and Cummins was one of the wrestlers used to help him prepare.

Cormier doesn't deny Cummins' story but is angered by his decision to break an unwritten code about not discussing training sessions. More than that, it's the extenuating circumstances that he feels Cummins seemed to ignore.

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Cormier had recently lost his 2-month-old daughter in a car accident when he was preparing for those Olympics. It was a tough time personally and, even without those issues, the training sessions can be grueling with fresh wrestlers constantly thrown at guys like Cormier, who are preparing for competition.

"Obviously I was going through a lot of personal things at that time and I was actually trying to win an Olympic gold medal," said Cormier, who just missed a medal by finishing fourth. "When things happen in a training room, you don't bring them out of the training room. Those things are reserved for the eyes that are in there.

"The circumstances around that situation were so difficult that I can't believe he would even consider that a win," Cormier added. "So many days in the wrestling room you just don't feel your best and you've still got to go in there and grind. You've still got to go in there and put in the work and he got me on one of those days that I wasn't at my best. He felt the need to make it public. But you know what though, it worked for him because now he's fighting in a co-main event of a UFC pay-per-view."

Cormier takes a 13-0 professional MMA record into this bout, including a 2-0 mark in the UFC. He is slimming down to 205 pounds for this fight from his usual range of about 240. He's dropped down to avoid fighting Cain Velasquez, the current UFC heavyweight champion and his friend and training partner at San Jose's American Kickboxing Academy.